


Questions of Permanence

by Anonymous



Category: Juniper Gentian and Rosemary - Pamela Dean, Wayward Children Series - Seanan McGuire
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:55:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21904816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: As Gentian tries to re-inhabit her life, Katherine Lundy negotiates for the remnants of the time machine.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11
Collections: Anonymous, Yuletide 2019





	Questions of Permanence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hhertzof](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hhertzof/gifts).



> For Two for One 2019.

The knock on the door came when everyone else was out. Rosie was at girl scouts, Junie out with Sarah, and Gentian's parents were buying a new washing machine because the old one had given up the ghost, as her father said.

Gentian had looked at him narrowly when he said that, and he shrugged at her and smiled that don't-ask-me smile that she'd learned to actually pay attention to. It had only been a week since she'd learned about his magic.

On reflection, she decided that it was only an expression, and the shrug had been a sort of apology, or just him being careful around her as both her parents had been to some degree. And then she resented having to reflect, and then she resented resenting something that she'd never had to resent before, and then she'd given up and gone upstairs to do homework. She had plenty of homework.

The knock at the door was loud and firm, easily heard even at the top of the house. Gentian ducked her head and flipped to the next page in her history textbook.

When it came again, Gentian imagined who it could be. She wasn't expecting anyone. A friend of a sister she could ignore. A friend of a parent wasn't likely at this hour.

A door to door salesperson?

Dominic had never done something so pedestrian as knock, so it was silly to think it might be him, or someone like him.

Third time -- Gentian groaned, and went down to see who it was, because she needed to know.

It was someone about her age, or maybe a little younger, but no one that Gentian had ever seen before. She was dressed neatly in clothes that seemed old fashioned without being completely out of place, and her hair was tidy, but her eyes were tired.

Even though she couldn't have known that anyone would answer the door, she was standing as if she'd posed herself in a pose that wasn't too eager, wasn't too reserved. Wasn't too noticeable.

"Hi?" Gentian said. Making a guess-- "Rosie's not here."

The girl on the doorstep opened her mouth, closed it again, and then said, "Introductions never get any easier. I'm Katherine Lundy, and I'm here about the time machine. May I--"

"No," Gentian said, rudely interrupting. "You're not." She slammed the door, and went up to her bedroom and read furiously until the others got home. Then she went down to argue with Junie, and didn't mention the girl at all.

The next day was Gentian's first day back at school, and the Giant Ants all came over to walk with Gentian. "This isn't necessary," Gentian said to Becky, low voiced, not really sure at all what she meant by necessary, but feeling both tentatively happy and uncomfortable.

"We talked about it, and Steph said that we needed to show you that we're a united front, just like always. It's not about school, it's for you."

"But if you don't want it, then think of it as something you're doing for us," Alma said, arm in arm with Steph, just in front of Gentian and Becky.

"Because we had to make sure you'd really be there," Erin said. Gentian thought she was joking, but the rhythms were just enough off to make it a question in her mind.

"I won't skip school until tomorrow," Gentian said.

They stayed in the hallway just outside Gentian's first period classroom until the final bell, talking wildly and laughing a little too much, but when Gentian went in, she did feel like things were -- maybe -- starting to return to normal.

After school, the Giant Ants took Gentian to the new pie shop that had opened near the mall and treated her, and then Gentian returned home to find Rosie outside on the front porch talking to the girl from yesterday. Gentian stopped dead on the sidewalk.

She walked past her house with her head down, around to the other side of the block, and then cut through the back and made it to her house without being spotted by anyone on the front porch.

She felt silly, but also satisfied, like she'd done something that was completely necessary even if no one else was likely to understand.

She felt sillier when Rosie came upstairs just before bedtime, her hair wet from the shower and her flannel pajamas looking fuzzy and cozy and warm. She sat down on Gentian's bed. "I know things are weird," she said. "But don't you think you're making it weirder?"

"What do you mean?" Gentian asked cautiously.

"You're trying to act like things aren't weird," Rosie said. "It's making everything twice as weird."

"I thought that's what everyone wanted," Gentian said. She searched Rosie's face, noticing the way it looked older than she remembered, and the way that wasn't a trick of the light.

Rosie shook her head. "It's what Junie wants, but when have you ever paid any attention to that?" she said.

Gentian laughed. "First time for everything?" she suggested.

But Rosie shook her head. "Don't--" She stared at Gentian, her eyes unfocused, her lips moving like she was trying out words, but nothing quite fit, each word remained unvoiced.

Gentian sighed. "Don't what?"

"I don't _know_ ," Rosie said. "It's just a feeling I had, after talking to Katherine Lundy, that we needed to--" But the words wouldn't come for Rosie.

Gentian nodded, though, thinking maybe she understood. "It's too soon?" she suggested. "Maybe we will. Eventually."

"Maybe," Rosie said doubtfully. She got up. "Night, Gentian."

"Night," Gentian said.

It was only as she heard Rosie's footfalls on the stairs that she replayed what Rosie actually had said and wondered what she'd talked about with Katherine Lundy. It sounded like it had been a little more than just the time machine.

Becky came over after school the next day. She'd been coming over whenever she had time, and Gentian could only be grateful, and make sure to stock enough snacks.

Becky read Gentian a few of her backlog of poems, and Gentian listened and laughed at the funny one and exclaimed at the serious one, but at the back of her mind she was wondering: am I trying too hard to be normal?

Maybe later she'd ask Becky, and maybe together they could pin it down further than Rosie had managed, but for now she observed herself and thought: maybe I am.

But what else was she supposed to do?

"Okay, tell me something else I need to know," Gentian said after Becky had put her poems back in her bag. Becky thought for a few seconds, and then said, "Oh, I should have said this earlier. Erin has applied for a summer program for future astronauts."

Gentian felt a complex mixture of feelings: something bittersweet, because it was exactly like the college problem but earlier than expected, and something envious, because if Gentian hadn't skipped so much time, maybe she'd have found something perfect for her like this was perfect for Erin, and something proud, because even though she hated having missed so much, she was so happy for her friends.

"That's wonderful," she said.

Becky answered everything Gentian didn't say. "It's only for one summer, and we figured that we could work around it. That was before we knew you'd be back. We were holding closer, and further, you know? Not to be ... not to let your loss make us unbearable to each other, but we didn't want to let ties weaken. So we promised to write to her when she was gone, and..."

Gentian nodded. "I'll write to her too," she said, and tried to believe that it would be enough. That her ties hadn't already weakened. 

"My turn," Becky said, as resolutely cheerful as always these days. "How were your first couple of days back in school?"

Gentian shrugged. "I haven't said anything unmistakably stupid, but I keep thinking it's the middle of winter, and it's terrible having classes without any Ants. I think that's the worst."

"Work hard so you can get back into the right classes next semester," Becky said unsympathetically.

Gentian winced. "Oh," she said, to change the subject. "Someone came by about the time machine." And then she wondered why she'd said it, and then she wondered why she wondered. Didn't she tell Becky everything?

"You're kidding," Becky said. Her eyes narrowed. "Isn't that a little suspicious?"

"Well..." It was, now that Becky mentioned it. "Rosie talked to her, and Rosie didn't seem suspicious. She seemed like she had a good conversation. A really good conversation that made her think."

"Huh," Becky said. "And you didn't talk to her?"

"No," Gentian said, feeling silly all over again.

Becky gave Gentian a knowing look. "Aren't you curious how she knew about it, and what she wants?"

Gentian had to think about it, work through her suspicion and avoidance, but then she grinned at Becky, and Becky grinned back. "Actually, I am. Katherine Lundy must have some story of her own."

Gentian got her chance a few days later, when she returned from school to find her father and Katherine Lundy waiting for her in the kitchen. "She's here because she heard about you from ..." He glanced at the girl, shook his head ruefully. "She's far better connected than me among magicians. She has an offer I think you should consider," Gentian's father said -- a suggestion, Gentian thought. Not an order. That was good.

She shrugged, and sat down at the table and stared at the bottle of wine in the middle of the table. What was someone Rosie's age doing bringing a bottle of wine as a gift?

Lundy's story explained it. She wasn't really Rosie's age, but actually much older. Which is why she wanted the stuff that was still up in the empty echoing attic, the things that had grown into Dominic's time machine.

"I had an experience that took me out of this world," she said quietly. "It wasn't exactly like yours, but ... I'm still looking for a way to make things right."

Make things right. That had been Dominic's promise. Go back and make things right again. 

"The time machine doesn't make anything right," Gentian said flatly.

"Do you blame the time machine, or do you blame Dominic?"

"Oh, Dominic. Definitely Dominic."

"So the time machine..."

"I don't know. I think it's just junk."

"I'd like to see it."

Gentian glanced at her father, but he was sipping wine and keeping out of it.

"Fine," she said. 

Gentian took Lundy up to the attic and showed her all that remained of the time machine. Watching Lundy pick up each piece, methodically examine it, and then replace it, Gentian felt a surge of jealousy.

Lundy didn't believe in the time machine, but she didn't disbelieve in it either, and that was a place that Gentian had abandoned forever, but watching Lundy, she could remember how it had felt to wonder -- could it be true?

And in the way that Lundy examined everything, and asked every question, and wouldn't give up until she'd plumbed every depth, Gentian saw herself.

As she tried to explain how it worked, she found herself remembering what she had thought was the fairy gold of memories. As fragile as dry leaves, as easily forgotten, but somehow, talking to Lundy, she remembered more. She didn't remember ten months worth, but it was still more than she'd ever thought she'd have.

"Are you doing something?" she asked Lundy.

"No," Lundy said. "Not in the way you mean. Yes, in the way you don't know how to mean. I'm trying to give you fair value. You tell me what you remember, and I'll ask the right questions to help you."

"How is that fair value?" Gentian asked. "How?"

Lundy pursed her lips. "I'll keep trying," she said.

"You do that," Gentian grumbled. "You know, that stuff isn't really mine," she added, the words feeling slippery in her mouth. "You don't have to give me anything for it."

Lundy turned to face her, her face taking on a expression that seemed to show years of determination. "When I was younger than you, I went somewhere that changed me forever. You don't think you've been changed, or you don't want to have been changed, but you've put in the time and the work that makes this yours. Trust me, I have a deep understanding of fair value, and you are owed."

But I don't want it, Gentian didn't say. She felt tears pricking the corners of her eyes. 

"Could you please go away now?" she managed to get out, and retreated to her room. 

When she was done crying, she felt a little better, like there was a part of her that had been waiting to be seen, and part of her that resonated with Lundy's words.

A part of her that had been changed, and was owed.

"No, I will not let Gentian try to make friends with her cat by spending hours in my room, and I'm surprised you would even ask me," Juniper said, her voice fairly vibrating with feeling.

Gentian thought she'd shown a lot of delicacy by asking her father for help instead of just sneaking into Junie's room whenever Junie was away, but apparently Junie saw it differently.

"Don't look at me like that. She doesn't deserve special treatment just because she got stuck in the attic for almost a year. Why should I--"

"It was a magical trap, and you fell for it too," Gentian snapped. "Don't act like you're so much better than me."

"I got out before you did."

"But I'm the one who sent him packing," Gentian said.

"You went up into the attic and never came down. You knew what was happening, and you still stayed. You had a choice. Why did you stay up there?"

And in the moment, Gentian had no answer. She tried to remember her dad saying that she'd done well to cope with the magic, but in the face of Juniper's scorn, that didn't seem like an answer. 

"It was magic..." she began, but Juniper scoffed.

"You could have left."

"I couldn't," Gentian said. "I couldn't leave without knowing."

"Girls," her mother said, and the fight was over, but Gentian still felt unsettled later that evening, when Rosie came up to her room again, asking to borrow a book but lingering like she wanted to talk. "What do you think?" Gentian asked. "You left first..."

"I don't know," Rosie said. "All I know is that I missed you when you were gone, but Juniper always said that you deserved to be stuck up there, that you didn't care."

"So maybe I shouldn't blame her because Dominic reinforced her worser tendencies even after she left the attic?" Gentian asked doubtfully.

Rosie made a face. 

"Yeah, the last thing Juniper needed was anything reinforcing her worser tendencies," Gentian said. They sat in silence contemplating the truth of that for a while, and then Gentian thought of something else. "Hey, Rosie ..."

Rosie looked up, seeming relieved by the prospect of a change in subject. 

"You know Katherine Lundy? Did she say anything to you about fair value, for your share of the time machine remnants?" Did she think Rosie was owed, or only Gentian?

But Rosie was nodding, and smiling a little. "She gave me something from each age she's seen twice, and explained how it looked going each way," Rosie said. "I told her that was fair."

Gentian laughed. "Well, that certainly seems fair," she said. "Time for time, is that it?"

Rosie looked puzzled. "No, it's fair because neither thing that we trade was any use to either of us. I'm not going to be her, she's not going to be able to make a time machine that works, we both know it, but the information still has some value, so it's fair."

Gentian laughed again, this time at herself. "Sorry, Rosie," she said sincerely. "I wasn't thinking."

"It's okay," Rosie said generously. "You're out of practice."

Gentian laughed some more, uncomfortably. Out of practice with what? Sibling sparring? Moving on? Thinking?

Katherine Lundy came by over the weekend, and talked to Juniper for hours. Passing by the living room, Gentian glanced in and was stuck by how Rosie looked older when she talked to Lundy, but Junie looked younger.

They toured the attic after they talked, and then Juniper went downstairs and Lundy knocked on Gentian's door.

"What's fair value for Juniper?" Gentian asked her, knowing it was pushing but curiosity won out.

"Shouldn't you ask your sister that yourself?" Lundy asked, a little dryly, one of those moments when she seemed more like an adult.

"No," Gentian said positively. "I really don't think I should."

"In that case..." Lundy shook her head tolerantly. "We're still negotiating, I think because your sister really likes negotiating, or at least arguing. But I think we'll end up settling on introductions to students at the sister school to the one I teach at. Where I teach, we want to remember. At the sister school, they want to forget."

"Juniper wants to forget?"

Lundy shrugged. "She's not like you and I. Seeing thing through to completion isn't important to her, and absolute truth takes a second place to social reality. If she was a little less embedded into her life here, I would suggest she would do well at the sister school."

"No, Junie would never go to a school for magical losers," Gentian said.

"Indeed," Lundy said, amused. She picked up an issue of Sky and Telescope from Gentian's desk and began to flip through it, stopping to stare at some of the pictures of Jupiter.

"You think I want to remember?" Gentian asked her. "You think I would fit at the school you teach at?"

Lundy looked up. "Of course you want to remember. Your father told me that you're interested in magic."

"I guess," Gentian said. "But your school..."

"It might be a good place for you, if you're interested in magic, even if you never had a doorway."

"My doorway was the doorway to the attic," Gentian said experimentally.

The expression on Lundy's face underwent a sudden change, as if she'd thought of something exciting but knew beyond a doubt that Gentian would not share her excitement. She picked up a sheet of notebook paper from Gentian's desk and started drawing.

"We're developing a classification system for the worlds that children visit. It's not intended for magic, or for creatures of magic like Dominic, but I think it gives a little insight into your situation." She drew an axis, and placed a dark dot in one quadrant. 

"In our classification system, it's clear that you've experienced something wicked, and something that partakes of nonsense. A time machine can't work in this world, it's nonsense, but you're also right that it was a trap, something wicked. But it wasn't your door, it was Dominic's personal magic, and that's why you could resist it, because your nature is logical."

"Your door, Gentian-- The door you could go through would be high in logic and virtue. The door you could go through would be like the door I went through."

The repressed intensity in Lundy's look made Gentian uncomfortable.

"You never had a true doorway, or a true, fair choice. Dominic was a predator. What I experienced ... it was a home. It was everything that Dominic pretended to be."

"It sounds nice," Gentian offered, uncertainly.

"You should have that," Lundy said.

Gentian didn't know what to say.

"I could take you to my house, or my sister's house, and you could--"

"Wait," Gentian said. "No."

Lundy froze. "But you're interested in magic... Wouldn't you like to have a real choice, not a trap?"

Gentian folded the edges of her homework papers, and didn't look at Lundy as she asked, "How do you know that's what you got?"

"What do you mean?"

"You didn't make the final commitment. How do you know how you would have been treated if you had? It's not like they warned you when you were about to make a mistake. The rules you told me about ... they were a trap just like Dominic was a trap. He kept asking, and they kept asking, and once you give everything away... What happens then?"

"I saw the adults, they had a place and a purpose. They let Moon develop hers, and Moon was always ... the canary in the coal mine. She took her oath."

Lundy took a deep breath. "Or what about this? You could look for the door, and even if you didn't want to do anything else, you could go through for long enough to tell me if Moon is still alive and if the market is still thriving and ..."

Lundy stopped, seeing the expression on Gentian's face.

"They sent children to fight their enemies," Gentian said. "They threw you out even though you didn't break the rules. They enabled you to make a deal that they knew wouldn't work. How is that fair value?"

In Lundy's face, Gentian saw a vast sorrow, a vast loss that wouldn't admit to anything Gentian was saying. "Maybe I'm wrong about you," Lundy said. "Maybe you couldn't be happy there. But I was happy. It was fair value for me, and I should never have tried to cheat. I should have stayed, and grown older, and lived with my choice. It was a mistake to try to live in between, when I knew how unfair this world is. Dominic could never have made it to the market, you would have been safe from that kind of trap there."

"I was safe here, eventually," Gentian muttered. "I'm safe now."

"This world is infinitely unfair, and you've seen that, even if you don't want to admit it. If you could only experience true fair value as I did... What regrets will you have when you're older, and still living with the unfairness? Don't you want the chance... Before it's too late...?"

"Nothing that separates me from my friends and my family and my life could ever be fair value for me," Gentian said, as gently as she could in the face of Lundy's vast loss. "Dominic taught me that, if nothing else."

Lundy looked down then, the eager expression on her face turning to stone and then to fragile fallen leaves, and then it was gone, leaving behind a fourteen year old face with practically no expression at all.

"Of course," she said. "You're sure."

"Very sure," Gentian said.

Over the weekend, Katherine Lundy brought a van and two deferential teenagers to Gentian's house. The girl looked a little older than Junie, and had sticky fingertips that had to be carefully unstuck from each box she carried. The boy was bald under his baseball cap, and Gentian caught a glimpse of an intricate black and blood red tattoo. They quickly removed all of Dominic's boxes from the attic.

Before they drove away, Lundy handed Gentian a card with her name, title at her school, and the two words "BE SURE". She also gave Gentian a box containing accessories for her telescope.

"Fair value," Gentian confirmed. "More than fair."

Lundy shook Gentian's hand, said a few words to each of the rest of the family, and then the van puttered up the street and Lundy was gone.

"Those doorway people were always considered strange by the rest of the magical community," Gentian's father said. "But I thought she was very helpful."

Gentian's mother glanced at Gentian and nodded, leaving Gentian feeling rather confused.

"It's not like she changed anything," she complained to Becky on Becky's next visit. "She just hung around and talked."

Becky was silent for a while, munching on chips. "Do you remember when we talked about whether you wanted to work with other astronomers?" she asked finally.

"Umm?" Gentian said.

"For a while, after Lundy showed up, I thought maybe it would turn out that what you wanted now was other people who'd been affected by magic. Or maybe just Katherine Lundy. She was a lot like you."

"Why does everyone keep saying that?" Gentian asked in exasperation. "I would never--"

"But you did," Becky said. "Not quite as much, not quite as deeply, but--"

And Gentian had to admit it was true. She had abandoned everything for a magical promise.

"But I'm back now," she said. "And I'm staying, and if I ever see a doorway that says BE SURE, I'm going to run the other way, back to the Ants, and my telescope, and my family and my future. The world is unfair, but we've always known that, haven't we?"

Becky nodded, but Gentian wasn't sure she was convinced.

"By the way," Becky said, "I think Steph's trying to come up with another Giant Ants project."

That fit surprisingly well with something Gentian had been thinking about herself. "I was thinking I should do that," she said. "I know it's usually Steph, but I want to show that I support the group, even though..."

Becky crunched more chips, thoughtfully. "I think Steph is thinking the same kind of thing. It's weird, though, because usually Steph's ideas come from genuine enthusiasm, but this time, it's because she feels guilty and wants to do something. Like you do, maybe, but from the other side."

"What other side is there?"

"The side where she knew that something was wrong after the ouija board, and she thinks she should have asked more questions when you dropped out of the play, and pushed harder when we couldn't contact you, and so on. We all feel that way, but Steph takes it more personally."

Gentian tried not to actually cringe with all the guilt that made her feel. "Do you think I should talk to her?"

Becky nodded.

"Okay, I'll talk to her," Gentian said.

After that, Becky read a few passages from books, and then it was Gentian's turn again, and Gentian's mind was blank. Luckily, Becky was willing to be patient.

"It's funny," Gentian said finally, thinking of all the memories she didn't have. "I would never go to the school for forgetting what happened, but I've already forgotten so much, and I don't know what it is that I should remember. I know I need to remember, and I know I need to learn from the experience, but I don't know how. I should know that, shouldn't I?"

"Maybe. Maybe you only learn through trying," Becky said. "I could write a poem about that, or about how I wish I could help you with that. But I think it'll be a poem about questions, not about answers."

Gentian sighed. "I guess sometimes things are like that."

"Sometimes," Becky said.


End file.
